Guide Field Reconnection Turbulence and Coronal Heating

Magnetic reconnection is a prime contender for explaining plasma heating in the solar corona. This work focuses on turbulent reconnection simulations in the strong-guide-field limit, where the gyrokinetics both captures all relevant physical effects and is numerically efficient. Continuously replenished current sheets force a quasi-stationary turbulent state, where significant levels of $\mathbf{j} \cdot \mathbf{E}$ heating can be measured. In addition, plasmoids are observed to form in the turbulence, causing secondary reconnection events through mergers. Under coronal conditions, the volumetric heating rate is evaluated as $1.5 \times 10^{-3}$ erg cm$^{-3}$ s$^{-1}$, in good agreement with observations. This value scales as, in particular, the reconnecting field to the power of $1.8$, and the characteristic current sheet width to the power of $0.75$. Moreover, heating bursts associated with plasmoid mergers conform with time scales associated observationally with nanoflares. For further details on this work, as well as on the emergence of temperature anisotropies, see [M.J.~Pueschel et al., \textit{Magnetic Reconnection Turbulence in Strong Guide Fields: Basic Properties and Application to Coronal Heating}, accepted for publication in Astrophys.~J.~Suppl.~Ser.].